That the religious climate of her time
greatly influenced Emily Dickinson's life has been widely acknowledged.
That her work grapples continuously with concerns of spirituality
remains undeniable. What consistently eludes critics and readers
is a sense of clarity in attempting to somehow de-code
Dickinson's "religious" poetry. The ambiguities that
give the work its density, mystery and beauty also continually
provide ample room for critical debate.

One aspect of spiritual representation
in the poet's work that has somehow managed to escape extensive
critical attention is the use of "sacramental" imagery.
Throughout her poetry, Dickinson again and again comes back to
images of the Christian sacraments in a painful quest for spiritual
truth. And, like other aspects of her craft, the poet's expression
of the "sacramental" escapes a simple unraveling or
a quick definition. Delving as a "critic" into her
embodiment of sacrament in language is -- like reading one of
Dickinson's poems -- daunting,, but ripe with possibilities.

Upon entering this, or any, discussion
of spirituality in Dickinson's work, a careful and thorough consideration
of her religious contexts is essential. Only through an understanding
of the poet's "raw materials" can we ever attempt to
discuss her unique understanding and poetic use of these images.
Past criticism on the subject has often been ill-informed of
Dickinson's particular religious contexts, and has suffered because
of the oversight. Several scholars have wrongly assumed that,
because she resisted admission to the church, Dickinson never
received the sacrament of baptism (Chase, Gelpi, Todd), while
others have mistakenly discussed her sacramental imagery in terms
of Catholicism (Anderson, Cameron, Chase).

In fact, Dickinson, was baptized and
deeply rooted in the tradition of Connecticut Valley Congregationalism,
a theology quite separate from and even hostile to the rituals
and sacraments of the Catholic church. The New England Puritan
tradition and Calvinistic theology formed the basis of Amherst's
religious climate and was the bedrock of Dickinson's upbringing.
The poet's exposure to Catholicism was likely quite limited.
As a result, critics who have imposed Catholic ideology have
missed the mark and have created a context that would have been
foreign to Dickinson herself. Only Jane Donahue Eberwein has,
to date, provided a sufficient discussion of Dickinson's sacramental
imagery in light of its Calvinist foundations. In doing so, Eberwein
has simultaneously been able to both focus and broaden
the critical discussion of these concerns. Certainly it is vital
to understand what ideals the traditional, church-sanctioned
sacraments would have symbolized in Dickinson's world. If the
poet replaces the traditional sacraments with her own alternatives,
we then at least bring an understanding of what sacrament, to
Dickinson, should accomplish in the human soul. It is only in
this way that we can hope to discover Dickinson's unique vision
of the meaning and experience of the sacred.

As Eberwein points out, Calvinism limits
sacraments to baptism and communion (the "Lord's Supper"),
completely excluding the rite of marriage and others recognized
by Catholicism. A sacrament, in Calvinist theology, is a symbolic
seal of the covenant between God and his elect. For the chosen,
it is God's promise of salvation. The Reforming Synod of 1679-80
led Congregational churches in America to adopt the Savoy Declaration
of 1658. Here, the sacraments are defined as "holy signs
and seals of the covenant of grace, immediately instituted by
Christ to represent him and his benefits and to confirm our interest
in him, and solemnly to engage us to the service of God in Christ"(Eberwein
68). At the time Dickinson came of age in Amherst, these principles
certainly still dominated Congregationalist theology and ritual.

Calvinists did not attribute baptism
with the power to remove man's sin and depravity, but rather
recognized it as a symbolic promise to children of church members.
Primarily, the sacrament offered hope for future faith, repentance
and grace. In addition, the cleansing quality of the baptismal
water symbolized the purification of the soul and served as an
"initiation" of sorts into the Christian community
of believers. Dickinson did receive the sacrament of baptism
as an infant, which was, in the First Congregationalist Church
of Amherst, a public symbol of her parents' devotion to a religious
upbringing rather than an act of individual, conscious choice.

The sacrament of communion in Congregationalist
worship differed vastly from that of the Roman Catholic or Anglo-Catholic
traditions. Under the guidance of Calvinism, it rejects both
Catholic transubstantiation and Lutheran consubstantiation. As
Eberwein notes, it instead "emphasizes the spiritual nourishment
drawn by the faithful from eating and drinking the food of the
soul under the physical symbols of bread and wine" (70).
According to one Amherst catechism from Dickinson's youth, communion
signified "a remission of sin, freedom from wrath, peace
with God, peace of conscience, adoption into God's family, increase
of grace, perseverance therein, sanctified mercies and crosses,
and a title to eternal life" (Eberwein 72).

Although Dickinson had received the
sacrament of baptism, she never took holy communion. Dickinson's
church, which she attended until approximately age 30, experienced
fervent revivals during the Second Great Awakening (1831 - 1850).
This new revivalism emphasized experiential religion, and Dickinson's
church began to more stringently limit the sacrament of communion
to those "converted and living in divine grace" (Eberwein
72). Because she never converted, Dickinson was excluded from
the Lord's Supper, although she apparently witnessed the ritual
on numerous occasions. This exclusion is crucial to a reading
of Dickinson's sacramental imagery. Dickinson's correspondence
mentions her experience of exclusion and alienation from the
church, and she recalled herself "fleeing from Sacrament"
(letter # 412).

It is this "fleeing" from
Calvinist-defined sacrament that shows up throughout Dickinson's
work -- And, to date, it has received meager critical attention.
For Calvinists, the two sacraments, baptism and communion, symbolized
God's promises to his elect, fellowship of the community of believers,
and an initiation into a meaningful spiritual life. In Dickinson's
poetry, sacrament takes on new meaning outside the constraints
of the exclusionary and (in the poet's experience) contrived
dogma of the Calvinist church. When Dickinson finds the sacraments
of the formal church empty and distant from her own experience,
she moves away from these constraints in poetry. As Eberwein
has rightly pointed out, the poet begins with the "tools"
of Calvinism, the raw materials of the language, and is imaginatively
challenged by the idea of "sacrament," but denies tradition
by converting doctrine into her own vision (77).

Indeed, the poet consistently uses language
associated with Calvinist sacraments -- but in doing so she questions
and re-conceptualizes the definition of the "sacred."
Dickinson's poetry turns traditional Christian sacrament on its
head, because, as Susan Rieke recognizes, "the categories
of the sacred and the secular are not distinct or separate classifications:
the secular is decidedly holy" (259). Her sacramental language
purposefully evokes the spiritual realm, but it is not the voice
of the Congregational church. Rather, it is spoken by a voice
continually examining the real source of the Divine, of fellowship,
and of spiritual understanding. Finding no solace or genuine
fellowship in the religious institution of her time and place,
yet longing for spiritual connections, Dickinson seeks grace
on her own terms. She finds sacrament in the world, but in new,
"secular" spaces -- such as in nature and in individual
consciousness -- where she somehow privately, intimately experiences
the Divine. When she directly addresses the sacrament of the
established church, it is generally with bitterness and rejection.

As Kathleen Norris points out, "Finding
herself unable to contain her religious feeling within the bounds
of orthodoxy, [ED] spent a good part of her life battling God
directly . . . It was her confrontation with religion that helped
shape her life and poetry . . . and like [Walt Whitman] she developed
what can rightly be called a 'heterodox faith' that had little
to do with churches or doctrines and a great deal to do with
inner experience as well as nature itself" (223). Dickinson
seeks contact with God outside rather than within the church,
by her own means and as an individual soul rather than as one
of the swooning flock of converts. In doing so, the poet's work
becomes dramatically subversive, undermining traditional authorities
and traditional definitions of meaningful spirituality.

A Young Communicant's Catechism, circulating in New England around 1830, instructed
individuals preparing for the first Lord's Supper to regard the
sacraments as "seals of the covenant of grace . . . to be
sacred signs, memorials and pledges of his mercy to us, through
a crucified Jesus" (Eberwein 68). Considering the religious
climate of Dickinson's time and place, language associated with
sacrament would include "seal," "covenant,"
"promise," and "ordinance." Dickinson's poetic
employment of language associated with Calvinistic sacrament
is frequent: "the Seal Despair -," "a Holiday
- / Crowded - as Sacrament -," "Covenant Needle,"
and "Humming - for Promise - when alone -," "The
Sealed Church," (Poems 258, 495, 851, 503, 322). Finding
both the clearly overt and the slightly shrouded allusions to
sacrament in the poet's work does not prove difficult -- But
it is only when we turn more carefully to individual poems containing
sacramental imagery that an understanding of Dickinson's unique
treatment begins to unfold.

It is certainly valid to suggest that
Dickinson, although excluded much of her life from religious
activity in the church, recognized the importance of spiritual
experience and connection to the Divine. Aside from the obvious
thematics of her work, the poet's correspondence documents these
values. Not only was Dickinson raised in an intensely religious
atmosphere, but she maintained that presence in her own life
and work. It was forever a monumental concern. One of Dickinson's
most powerful poems speaks of the experience of spiritual assurance,
of being among the "elect." The speaker in Poem 528
vehemently claims the state of grace and immortality for herself:

Mine -- by the Right of the White Election!
Mind -- by the Royal Seal!
Mine -- by the Sign in the Scarlet prison --
Bars -- cannot conceal!

If, in fact, the poet experienced the
spiritual assurance spoken here, her refurbishment of the concept
of sacrament must have played a vital role. It is in this experience
of new understanding of sacrament that Dickinson reaches and
connects with the Divine, cementing the seal and promise and
signifying her place in the community of the "saved."
This assurance exists in spite of the poet's bitter recognition
of her exclusion, created by the rigid doctrine of the church:

Snatches, from Baptized Generations
--
Cadences too grand
But for the Justified Processions
At the Lord's Right hand. (Poem 367, ll. 5-8)

Cynthia Griffin Wolff points out that,
unlike the Roman Catholics, "Puritans had rejected the 'magical'
properties of sacraments, viewing them as just another manifestation
of decadence in the church of Rome" (212). While for Catholics,
communion becomes the actual body and blood of Christ, for Calvinists
the Lord's Supper is pure symbol. Wolff believes that "In
Dickinson's estimation, the loss obliterated the promise . .
. The sacramental vernacular of water, wine and bread, which
gave hope to so many other Christians, spelled anguish to Emily
Dickinson, misery and betrayal . . . As a poet, she would deploy
precisely this vernacular, then -- this limited Biblical evocation
of food and drink, in order to explore the comprehensive desolation
of all human beings -- spinning through empty space and irretrievably
isolated from their mysterious, metaphorical God" (212).
Wolff has rightly recognized Dickinson's need for a reintroduction
of the mystery and close contact with the deity absent from the
Calvinist church. This is not to suggest that Dickinson was a
"closet Catholic," -- In actuality, the poet more closely
resembled one of the old-school, pre-revival Puritans who believed
that the covenant with God must be solidly based in an extremely
personal experience, stressing careful thought regarding doctrine
and an intensely individual faith the Divine (Telfer
38). I simply suggest that she longed for a magical, literal
connection to the deity, and that this hunger could not be fed
by the church of her childhood. In Poem 751, Dickinson directly
addresses the God, church and sacrament of Calvinism, and her
tone is decidedly bitter -- In the church's sacrament, she is
experiencing only exclusion, not magic or connection to the Divine:

Lest I should insufficient prove
For His beloved Need --
The Chiefest Apprehension
Upon my thronging Mind --

'Tis true -- that Deity to stoop
Inherently incline --
For nothing higher than Itself
Itself can rest upon --

So I -- the undivine abode
Of His Elect Content --
Conform my Soul -- as 'twere a Church,
Unto Her Sacrament. (ll. 5-16)

These are images of the doctrinal sacraments
rejected by Dickinson as empty and exclusionary. She finds the
direct, mysterious sacramental contact with the Divine through
nature and through the individual consciousness of the "self,"
bringing this to life in the poetry. These more natural,
more intimate images are the "metaphorical embodiments of
his lost presence" mentioned by Wolff (422).

In Poem 1077, Dickinson uses traditional
sacramental imagery of communion. Here, the celebrated sacramental
experience is found in nature -- The language is only the "raw
material" of the poet's subversive theme. In this poem,
the sacrament is one of inclusion. It is non-doctrinal, a poem
in which the natural world contains the sacred experience:

These are the Signs to Nature's Inns
--
Her invitation broad
To Whosoever famishing
To taste her mystic Bread --

These are the rites of Nature's House
--
The Hospitality
That opens with an equal width
To Beggar and to Bee

For Sureties of her staunch Estate
Her undecaying Cheer
The Purple in the East is set
And in the North, the Star --

In Poem 342, Dickinson marks the changing
of natural seasons as a material, visible embodiment of immortality.
Using both the language of the physical, natural world and the
language of the sacramental, Dickinson recognizes a symbolic
experience of spirituality and rebirth. This experience, of course,
lies outside the realms of the church and is a revolutionary
form of sacrament. Here, the material "sign and seal"
is not sanctioned by doctrine, but is nevertheless experienced
intimately by the poet as a sacred experiential marker. For Dickinson,
connection to the natural world is a connection to the real self,
and ultimately to the Divine. Here, divine promise becomes real
in the cycles of nature rather than in the communion cup or at
the baptismal font:

The Lilacs -- bending many a year --
Will sway with purple load --
The Bees -- will not despise the tune --
Their Forefathers -- have hummed --

The Wild Rose -- redden in the Bog --
The Aster -- on the Hill
Her everlasting fashion -- set --
And Covenant Gentians -- frill

A vivid eucharistic thread runs through
Poem 130, in which Dickinson observes natural changes in terms
of human concerns of life, death, and immortality. Here the poet
is immersed in bittersweet changes of the Indian Summer. Again
she uses the traditional sacramental language of the Calvinist
church, but only to serve her alternative vision of sacrament.
The poet comes closest to experiencing God when she connects
the "self" to the natural world. Dickinson recognizes
the material embodiment of ultimate, spiritual truths and the
experience of rejuvenating grace in what she sees around her
in nature, not in the church's communion:

Oh Sacrament of summer days,
Oh Last Communion in the Haze --
Permit a child to join.

In Poem 508, Dickinson overtly rejects
the sacraments of the Calvinist church, embracing instead the
"self." Her direct sacramental language parallels the
emptiness of the church's baptism with the richer meaning of
her own unique baptism. As an expression of nature and what is
"natural," the individual consciousness is celebrated
here -- individual power and free will, in direct opposition
to Calvin's doctrine, is embraced as an alternative baptism into
salvation. The covenant with the divine, and acceptance into
the community of the elect, comes only by valuing the individual
"self":

I'm ceded -- I've stopped being Theirs
--
The name They dropped upon my face
With water, in the country church
Is finished using, now,
And They can put it with my Dolls,
My childhood, and the string of spools,
I've finished threading -- too --

Baptized, before, without the choice,
But this time, consciously, of Grace --
Unto supremest name --
Called to my Full -- The Crescet dropped --
Existence's whole Arc, filled up,
With one small Diadem.

My second Rank -- too small the first
--
Crowned -- Crowing -- on my Father's breast --
A half unconscious Queen --
But this time -- Adequate -- Erect
With will to Choose, or to reject,
And I choose, just a Crown --

Again, in Poem 383, we see traditional
sacramental imagery used subversively to celebrate individual
consciousness. Here, the inner experience, the "real thing,"
is a vital spiritual connection to the Divine. It is interesting
to note that, in this case, Dickinson deals with the sacrament
"exhilaration" as if it is actually a material embodiment
-- It can be drunk, or "set away." For Dickinson, this
inner experience of the "self" becomes the material
substance equivalent to outward and visible sacrament, and is
elevated above the "less divine" alternative (i.e.,
the church's version of sacrament):

Exhilaration -- is within --
There can no Outer Wine
So royally intoxicate
As that diviner Brand

The Soul achieves -- Herself --
To drink -- or set away
For Visitor -- Or Sacrament --
'Tis not of Holiday

To stimulate a Man
Who hath the Ample Rhine
Within his Closet -- Best you can
Exhale in offering.

Using traditional language in order
to subversively suggest alternative values is one way in which
Dickinson plays with the idea of sacrament. However, it is not
the only way. Susan Rieke suggests that "The familiar,
skeptical and blasphemous stances with the deity are sacred positions
for Dickinson, as well as necessary parts of her relationship
with the deity. In carving her role as a poet, Dickinson likewise
sacralizes that position, and, at times, makes herself, as poet,
superior to the deity" (260). Rieke is touching upon Dickinson's
tendency not only to re-conceptualize sacrament, but to take
on the role of creating sacrament and offering it to others as
an immortal piece of herself.

In the midst of all this discussion
of sacrament, it is most fascinating to recognize the ways in
which Dickinson creates sacrament in the form of poetry.
The poet goes beyond searching for the sacred out in the world
-- she is able to find it within the "self" and to
manifest it in the material form of the poem on the page. Through
the act of writing, the poet creates, partakes of, and shares
sacrament with the reader. She not only searches for the sacred
in the world, but she finds it within the "self" and
gives it expression in the poem on the page. This expression
is immortal, because expressed as written poetry it outlives
the physical human body of the poet and ensures life after death.

The idea of the progression of "self"
from a state of exclusion and deprivation, through experience
and into the role of nourisher of others, is most beautifully
played out in Poem 773, where sacramental imagery of communion
again support of Dickinson's alternative, subversive vision:

Deprived of other Banquet,
I entertained Myself --
At first -- a scant nutrition --
An insufficient Loaf --

but grown by slender addings
To so esteemed a size
'Tis sumptuous enough for me --
And almost to suffice

A Robin's famine able --
Red Pilgrim, He and I --
A Berry from our table
Reserve -- for charity --

As Joanna Yin notes, Dickinson offers
her poetry as "nourishment to sustain other souls,"
in lieu of the sacrament of the Puritan Lord's Supper. The ultimate
suggestion in this action is weighty: "The old sign, like
the old Puritan religion, is cracking, cannot sustain life, and
must be replaced" (8). Dickinson seems to view the Calvinist
communion cup and the Calvinist baptismal font as those which
are "Quaint -- or Broke -- / A newer Sevres pleases -- /
Old Ones crack --" (Poem 640).

In considering both Emily Dickinson's
reconstruction of the sacred symbols and her very personal recreation
of "sacrament" through poetry, Richard Wilbur comes
closest to "summing it all up":

"[Dickinson] inherited a great
and overbearing vocabulary which, had she used it submissively,
would have forced her to express an established theology and
psychology. But she would not let that vocabulary write her poems
for her . . . To be sure, ED wrote in the metres, hymnody and
paraphrased the Bible, and made her poems turn on great words
. . . But in her poems those great words are not merely being
themselves; they have been adopted, for expressive purposes.
They have been taken personally, and therefore refined"
(127).

Truly, Dickinson has refined
and made the sacrament personal -- and this remains,
in the material form of the written poems, a literary and spiritual
legacy.